Emilio Caraffa

Emilio Caraffa
Emilio Caraffa
Born	1862 Catamarca, Argentina
Died	1939 La Cumbre, Argentina
Nationality	Argentine
Known for	Painter
Movement	Post-impressionism

Emilio Caraffa (1862–1939) was an Argentine painter of the post-impressionist school.

Emilio Caraffa was born in Catamarca, Argentina, in 1862. His family relocated to Rosario, where he attended the local National College (a system of public college preparatory schools), and learned to draw and sketch. He received lessons in painting in Buenos Aires from 1883 to 1884, an experience which earned him a scholarship from the Minister of Justice and Culture, Eduardo Wilde. Caraffa attended art academies in Naples and Rome, as well as in Madrid's Royal Fine Arts Academy of San Fernando, where he studied under Francisco Pradilla and was inducted into the Order of Charles III, in 1887. Returning to Argentina in 1890, Caraffa relocated to Córdoba, where in 1896, he received authorization from the progressive Governor of Córdoba Province, José Figueroa Alcorta, to establish the Provincial Fine Arts Academy. Caraffa was appointed a professor at the Córdoba National University in 1900.

His earlier works were largely landscape art, a popular genre locally, at the time; after 1900, however, his art tended towards post-impressionism - a largely overlooked genre among Argentine art patrons which Caraffa, who enjoyed strong official support, arguably helped popularize in Argentina. Among his best-known early works from this period in his career was Head of a Jewish Man, which he exhibited at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, earning a silver medal. Remaining active in the Córdoba cultural sphere, he obtained funding for the province's first official art museum in 1911, and the institution opened in 1916.